


There's Gotta Be Some Butterflies Somewhere, Wanna Share?

by Bonesout, grandfatherclock



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Grinding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25245019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonesout/pseuds/Bonesout, https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: Jester Lavorre is no baking genius… that she knows ofyet. She looks at all the ingredients of her life, the flour and the sugar and the loneliness and the blueberries and the Zemnian wizard who has stars in his eyes when he looks at her, and makes for herself some cupcakes.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	There's Gotta Be Some Butterflies Somewhere, Wanna Share?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt for "Uselessly in Love" !!!
> 
> Bones and I wrote this a while back with the initial prompts being "the common tongue of your loving me" + "burn"—but the core concept also fit for widojest week so we decided to save it >:3
> 
> HAPPY WIDOJEST WEEK!!
> 
> —grandfatherclock

It's about half-way through that Jester throws out the recipe.

The scrawled instructions are all well and good—and _honestly_ , it was so _so_ thoughtful of Caleb to find and ask and beg and then pay Jester's favourite baker in Rosohna for instructions on how to create the simplest of cupcakes, with a homemade blueberry icing. It's not like she didn't _appreciate_ it… but only _half a cup of sugar_ … no. Jester stares with unabashed delight as she pours the granules of white into the batter, flour staining her hair and face and elbows.

Her tail is flicking around her. No matter how unruly they might seem to others, Jester has perfect control over its movement, thank you very much—

A clang behind her. She tries not to wince, and doesn't quite want to look. "Cayleb," she calls instead, standing on a footstool so that she has enough space to work on the counter. Every time she says that name it sounds like such a _tease_ , she doesn't necessarily mean for it to be… oh, she's smiling. Her tail flicks behind her, and her head cranes out to admire the birds she can hear chirping through the window. " _CAYLEB!!!!!_ "

A few startled rumbles and crashes later (probably books and papers crashing to the ground), Caleb comes stumbling through the door of the kitchen, glasses lopsided, hair pulled up like he was in the middle of some intense research.

"Ja? Ja? What—" he says, fixing his glasses, examining the mess before him. Typical of Jester, but even so a magnificent disaster to behold. Flour all over the countertops, half-made batter sticking here and there… Caleb blinks. “What… I thought you were making… cupcakes?" His eyes watch her tail go back and forth, a little _distracted._ Like she is up to something. He smiles. This is Jester. She’s _always_ up to something.

Jester leans back a little, craning dangerously on the footstool as she beams at him. There's a bowl she's fumbling with as she clenches an arm—freckled and bare and _toned—_ around it. "Hiiiii, Cayleb." Her smile is dizzying and from her position she notices that first and foremost… in as long as she can remember, she and Caleb are the same height. Her immediate reaction is to drop the bowl to grab her cheeks, but though the bowl _does_ tremble in her grip for a moment she remembers what she's trying to achieve here.

The base of her tail points accusatorially like a pointer finger to the source of the _clang_ —her tail smacked against some plates and they've been tossed all across the floor. Her lower lip juts out adorably and she gives him a tragic and hopeful look. Her eyebrows furrow to complete the exaggerated expression. "Can you help me clean _upppp_ , Cayleb?" Her eyes widen. "You can be my sous chef!" She airily waves the whisk in her other hand like she's anointing him with a very important title and groans as splotches of batter get over her face and dress. "Aw, man!"

Caleb gulps. Truth be told, he was busy pouring through his latest acquired tomes, studying of course, and he nearly got to a conclusion. None of that seems to matter now. Jester is so close, he can count her freckles, one by one. _If only there weren't so much batter across her face._

"Oh Jester…" Caleb chuckles, moving his thumb to brush the splotches away from her cheeks, revealing those freckles he so admires. A simple gesture, but a dangerous one. He knows that all too well.

"Ja, sure," he says, breaking eye contact with a nod and moving towards the source of the mess. "I did say I would help you make cupcakes, and I intend for that to happen." He shrugs his coat off (wishing he had left it in his study), setting it on the cleanest spot he can find on the counters. He kneels down to the floor, picking up the plates, taking the ones still in one piece to the sink to be cleaned and used another day.

Jester exhales, feeling the remnants of the warmth of his blackened fingers against her cheeks even as he's moving away. It seems to linger there, like this buzz under her skin, and she watches for a moment with hopefully not too much excitement as he pulls off one of his many layers, now simply a nice white shirt over his chest. It's dipping low enough she can see the barest hints of his clavicle, and her eyes dart back to her bowl when his gaze lifts to see her.

"I think I'm _super_ good at this," she says, just to say anything. She carefully sets the whisk inside the bowl, and wonders for a moment if it will sink in the batter before she gazes back at him almost shyly. Her voice feels… taunt, heightened, as she straightens her back to support the bluster in her voice. "My mama said when she was singing, she would _create_ her own notes instead of following the sheet music, Cayleb." She widens her eyes for emphasis, white completely around her violet irises as her dark hair frames her angular face. " _I think_ "—it's a whisper-shout she's making—" _I'm creating my own melody._ "

Still watching him, she dumps another couple spoonfuls of sugar into the batter, and with the sinking whisk furiously starts to mix it in.

Caleb arches back, pumping some soap onto his hands to begin his work. He watches Jester as she talks, spilling everything that popped into her mind like the batter in her bowl. _Just as sweet too_ , he notes, watching her furiously dump sugar.

"I look forward to tasting it," he says, scrubbing his hands, his fingers still staying as black as they always were. "Anything you create is…" he chuckles, grabbing the first plate, "a _spectacle._ You and your mother definitely have that in common." He scrubs away, the water splashing _juuust a bit_ onto his shirt, making it stick to his torso. He rolls his sleeves up, determined to make things right for Jester.

He looks to Jester. There's still more batter on her face and he desperately wants to get it, taste it himself so he can get a tease of what she's cooking. But, there are dishes to be done, and he _mustn't_ get distracted, no matter how hard it might prove.

_Spectacle_ , Jester thinks, and she looks to the array of muffin cups set out on the tray ahead of time. There's already droplets messy against the grey of the tray, and she half-heartedly wipes one of them with her thumb. It smears with her touch. "Yeah, well! When the Traveler and I do pranks, we never _know_ how they will end when we start it. It's like my drawings… I just doodle, you know?"

She thinks for a moment of some of her more recent doodles that have turned to completed shaded sketches, and is suddenly grateful her back is to Caleb. She beats the batter, _hard_ , remembering how her lazy lines turned into a torso… his torso. She saw _all_ of him at the beach. His skin was so pale, and he flushed brilliantly under the caress of the Nicodrani sun. He waded into the waters and Jester then found herself momentarily _jealous_ of that blue. 

From the corner of her eyes, she can see his shirt sticking to him from the water, and her throat feels dry. To distract herself she asks, "Do you know what you'll have at the end when you start making your spells?"

Caleb blinks, setting aside the plates to dry, starting to mop up the water with a towel to finish.

"My spells?" He repeats, moving to clean up some stray batter. "Oh, ah… not particularly. That requires a bit more calculation. If I try to make one without proper precision, it could be disastrous, and…" He scratches his face. He needs to shave again. "It isn't as simple to clean up as batter on a counter, Jester." He smiles, leaning on the counter just to watch her, just for a moment. Her determination for this project was shining through her, passion he could see with his eyes, something he wanted to hold on to.

"I believe in you though," he says a bit awkwardly, his cheeks flaring up. He gestures to the bowl. "Whatever that outcome might be."

"Oh, yes!" Jester nods sagely as she considers his words. Her face turns darker near the end as he drawls to a close, and she gives him a wide smile. "And your spell-casting costs so much _money_ , it's why you're always so broke!" She pouts. "Even though we keep making so much." 

She sets the bowl aside and turns on her stool, relishing how she can see him at his eye-level. Though, she had to admit to herself looking up wasn't such a bad view, it's how she noticed his _chin_ … her cheeks are darkening and the pause between her words has stretched on unnaturally long. Jester is thankful for the birds outside for whistling, for the wind to be brushing against trees and providing a measure of depth to the silence.

"I will help you buy stuff, though." She thinks of their shopping trip all that time ago, after Fjord got his fancy new sword, and bites the inside of her cheek. She crosses her arms and gives him an assertive look. "Just because you gotta be careful when you make your spells doesn't mean you gotta be careful when you _use_ them!" She waves her hands in the air.

Caleb's mouth falls open, laughs slipping out here and there at her words. He couldn't help it, everything she said sent him further into this spiral of _maybe_ and _what if._

"Depends on the spell," he challenges, leaning his chin on a blackened hand to give in to this watch he was pursuing. “But… yes. Spell- _doing_ is the fun part, I will admit."

He doesn't note her comments on money. It was this strange silent agreement that they had come to, ever since they had first fought over money and worth, that their spoiling habits were mutual, and therefore valid. He smiles at the memory, so long ago it seemed.

"Any other help I can offer?" he asks, gesturing to the clean counters.

Jester thinks long and hard, her eyebrows furrowing as she eyes him up and down. As if assessing him for some sort of manual labour rather than another menial task. “Hmmmm." She’s absolutely not thinking about the tease of reddish-brown chest hair the open button on the top of his shirt reveals, or the way the bits of wetness on his shirt leave it transparent and sticky against his skin blots at a time.

She hops off her footstool, her dress fluttering around her knees for a moment and the white frills underneath revealing with the movement. She grabs her batter and marches forward to him, eyes on his mouth with a fierce determinedness to her gaze. "Cayleb Widogast," she says, and thinks for a moment she hasn't nearly said his last name enough. She _likes_ saying it. "Tell me if you like my melodyyyy!" She raises her whisk high, close by his face. Baiting him to either swipe it with his fingers or lick it.

Caleb arches a brow, curious. For a moment he wants to pretend he isn't paying attention to her, just to hear his name again in that lilting accent, but it was obvious he was entirely focused on Jester approaching him, determined to get what she wanted.

He reaches out with a finger, catching some of the dripping batter, letting it flow down his finger, eyes moving to Jester who seems to be watching him with impossible anticipation. He likes it, just a little. It’s nice to have her watch him like he had something to offer her, something to make her smile even brighter.

Then, without breaking eye contact with Jester, he licks his finger, lips wrapping around it gently. His eyes widen once the taste finally reaches his tongue, practically being attacked by sweetness. Like being suddenly awoken to Jester pouncing on him, hunger in her eyes for the day ahead, egging him to wake up and seize an opportunity. Caleb presses his lips together. _That's unrealistic._

"Well," Caleb says with a chuckle, cheeks still growing hot, "I am no baker, that is more Caduceus's department but…" He nods. "Tastes sweet as a cupcake."

Jester's tail whips behind her excitedly, the heart-shaped spade of it curling around Caleb's waist as she dives in for a hug. She can practically _feel_ the warmth of his touch, the heat of his chest against her face as she squishes her nose against him. Under just this one layer.

She's flushing brilliantly as she pulls back, clearing her throat and tugging a loose strand over her pointed and bejewelled ear. The cough is more a dainty _ahem_ than anything truly convincing, and it's a strange concoction between the sultry tease of her mother's voice when she wants to command someone's attention and what the heroine in _Tusk Love_ might say. It practically squeaks out of her mouth.

Oh, Traveler help her, she's staring at his lips. They're soft and pink, and she's blinking as she takes in his compliment, trying to flit her attention to the warmth of his eyes or the red of his hair glowing in the sunlight. _Merde_ , the sight of his lips sucking the sweetness off his own fingers has her aching for something she isn't quite sure of—like she wants to cup his face in her own hands, like she wants to feed him all the finest chocolates in Nicodranas and wipe the chocolate off his delicate mouth.

His tongue reaching up to clean her thumb… _fuuuuuck_. The fantasy must be evident all over her face. She's messily turning away and pouring the batter into the muffin cups in uneven handfuls, her movement sharp and disjointed. Halfway through, she remembers the footstool and hops back on, her dress ruffling once more. She's grateful her hair is long enough to hide her neck, she's sure it's so _dark_.

She tastes a bit as the cups fill up, and the sugary creaminess of it explodes in her mouth. " _Yessssss_ ," she giggles, pumping her fist in the air.

"See?" He says laughing, trying to smother the burst of excitement he feels in his throat, Jester's expression so horribly pleased with him and herself. That to him was sweet enough. 

"I just cleaned these counters," he whispers, playfully grabbing her fist with one of his hands. He moves behind her, feeling her tail flick at his sides, reminding him she was still in charge. "Don't get more batter all over them again. Steady." He moves their hands to the bowl together, scooping the batter. He assists her in finishing the cups, insisting to himself he's admiring the neater cupcakes, but in truth… he's admiring the way his soot like skin looks against Jester's blue.

Jester stills for a moment as she feels him behind her, the two of them perfectly aligned with the footstool. His face is close to _hers_ and she can feel his breath over her shoulder, near her ear. Their hands are intertwined and her grip eases into his direction as he balances out the batter with clinical certainty. A part of her would… very much like to lean into his front, head tipping back to feel the clench of his jaw as he talks.

So she does, scrunching her nose and craning her neck back so they're face-to-face. There's still some batter over her face and he's as covered in flour as her from the hug. There's this faint flush to him now, a pink working itself on his cheeks, on the bridge of his strong nose, and Jester wonders if he thinks she's being a… well, _jester_ , when she raises her finger and pokes him there. It's a lot easier to tease him in the way she does when everything is under the gentle guise of a joke. "We make such a good team," Jester says, and they're so close he must feel her cool breath against his face. "I should've hired you _ages_ ago."

Something inside Caleb _growls_ , and he’s not sure it’s because he’s craving cupcakes.

“Ah…” Caleb laughs uneasily, eyes fighting to settle over Jester’s lips, puckering the slightest at him, just the way she did when she knew she had the upper-hand.

“Did not realize you were paying me,” he dares to say, daring to wonder exactly what that payment might amount to. “You are the master at work here, I am merely a spectator.” 

_Spectacle._ Everything about her was just that. He could gaze for hours, knowing better than to partake, like a sweet too expensive, too divine to even ask for. _But…_ when it was offered to him like this…

He presses his lips together. _No. You don’t deserve her._

Caleb lets go of her, stepping back. His whole body feels hot. _Must be the oven…_ Speaking of— 

“Right,” Caleb says, turning his back. “Into the oven then?”

Jester knows she had enough foresight to preheat the oven and she preens behind Caleb as he checks inside, finding all the other pots and pans the Mighty Nein stashes in every crevice of the kitchen stacked around the counters near the oven rather than inside it. She holds the tray in her hands, her grip sure against the weight of it, and she giggles, bouncing beside Caleb with each bound of her feet a spring of energy.

She tilts her head, her long blue hair falling to one shoulder. "Yep," she says, lips popping on the _p_. "And then we'll put the icing"—she was rather liberal with the sugar in that too, and she's already beaming as she imagines the taste of it with the heated warmth of the freshly baked cupcakes—"and then we have snacks for everyone!"

Caleb raises an eyebrow and Jester stamps her foot in protest, though her lips break into a small laugh. "Half for me, then we can give the others to everyone," she says innocently in compromise.

“Wouldn’t expect it any other way,” Caleb says with a grin, opening the oven to grant Jester’s cupcakes access.

“Blueberry icing then, I suspect?” he asks, knowing without a doubt she had… _altered_ that recipe too. “I’m pleased you chose to go with my favourite flavour.”

Jester hums, dipping low under Caleb's arm so she can push in the tray. It's hot, she probably should've used oven mitts, but she's always run cold and the heat never quite bothered her. In fact, and she's intimately aware of the warmth of Caleb's arm as she pulls back, straightening her back and running her hands down the front of her dress to smooth out some of the creases, she… _really_ likes it.

Unfortunately the movement of her hands only serves to smear her dress further in flour and smudges of batter, and she wonders if she looks exceedingly childish to Caleb. Absentmindedly she licks her fingers, smiling with approval at the sticky sweetness, and then heads for the sink to wash her hands. "Hey, Cayleb," she says, very subtly, " _what's your favourite food though?!_ "

She thinks it might be hard to find a Zemnian establishment to poke for food here in Rosohna, but _holy fuck_ is she going to do it. _Maybe the Traveler can help_ … her mind is spinning with ideas.

“You always ask the most difficult questions,” Caleb says with a defeated sigh, the laughter falling from his lips indicating he certainly did not mind though. He would do anything to satisfy her curiosity.

“When I was younger,” he says, hair falling in front of his face as he leans on the counter. “My mother and I would bake a focaccia.” He shrugs. “Herb bread. Delicious to dip in anything.” 

He walks over to Jester, mind a bit boggled after the way she still looked dazzling despite the mess she made of herself. _Hard, creative work_ , he decides.

“I like anything Caduceus makes,” he goes on. “And anything blueberry, as I said before. But perhaps our next project can be that focaccia bread.”

"Oh my gosh," Jester says, " _Cayleb, you must've been such an adorable baby_." Thoroughly distracted thinking about Caleb with chubby cheeks and little baby hands clumped into small fists, she looks at him excitedly. "Did you eat a lot of… of _focaccia_ "—she says that word carefully—"when you were small? Mama used to let me eat _so many chocolates_ and then one day I barfed on my bed and Blud was so mad and then there were rules."

She feels a flush working itself over her face when she remembers Caleb in Zadash, hissing that her daily allowance was more than what his parents made in their entire lifetimes. _Fuck_ , she must sound so ditzy and entitled, asking if Caleb ever vomited from eating too _much_ … "I mean…" Her voice continues uncertainly in the silence. "Like. I guess I want to know funny baby Caleb stories, is all," she blusters out.

Caleb knows that look on Jester’s face. Though she still spoke her mind no matter what, over time she had grown to hear herself more clearly.

Caleb chuckles. “I know what you meant, blueberry,” he says, pondering his memories. He scratches his stubble.

“Well… not much comes to mind. Though, I do remember being told to stay out of the kitchen when mother was cooking.” He smiles a little sadly. “And being gently scolded when I disobeyed.”

He wishes his mother could tell Jester stories about him just the way her mother told stories about _her_.

“And no, I did not barf when I ate focaccia,” he assures, trying to lighten the mood.

Jester blinks, and then smiles with relief, cleaning her hands with a towel. "You _disobeyed_ , Cayleb?" Her eyes widen with mock surprise—though there might've once been a time that she would've been _actually_ surprised by this, considering Caleb so dour and strict when they came across each other in that tavern in Trostenwald.

_Hi, my name is Jester_ , she sang to him, and in exchange receiving, _My name is, ah. C-Caleb_.

She knows him a little better by now, though.

Jester knows he likes to warm his hands with bread, she knows he laughs when she draws dicks and googly eyes on his pages. She knows he can mime his lips to the sound of her voice with the echo stone pretty well, imitating her mannerisms and making Jester wonder if he really… found her _that_ charming, the way he pretended to wiggle with happiness when he got that letter from the Pillow Trove. She knows he promised to play pranks with her with the gold dust from Essik's spell.

She just _knows_ him, and knows that he must've been an absolute _ruckus_ as a kid.

"Oh man, mothers are the best," she laughs, crossing her arms. "Kids are so _weird_ and mamas take care of us all the _tiiiiime_." She peers at him, running a now clean hand through her hair. It's clumped and she's _absolutely_ gonna need to take a bath after this. "I thought Veth was like your mama for _forever_ until I realized she wanted to… you know." She imitates with her fingers a sexual motion, one protruding finger entering into her thumb and index finger in a circle. "Who can blame her though! You're very handsome." She wiggles her eyebrows. "With your _chiiiiin_ …"

Caleb swallows, a hand instinctively going to his chin. Jester did mention it a lot, among other things. Just the same as _he_ loved to mention how blue Jester was. Whether he was embarrassingly black-out drunk, wobbling on the dance floor with her, or just talking about her to his friends.

He couldn't help it, though. Making her blush was like bringing a galaxy to life, tiny freckles taking the place of stars across her skin.

"Nott is… funny." He shrugs. "Not afraid to…" Caleb gulps, words harder to come by when Jester was in such a playful mood in front of him. "… Get what she wants."

"Well." Jester wonders if her cheeks are ruddy, she wouldn't be surprised if they were. "I guess Nott just… you know." Her arms are bare, and she feels a tingle on them, a buzz right under her skin. She crosses them, just to have something to do as she leans against the counter. "Nott can say anything as long as it’s…" _Framed the right kind of way,_ she thinks, nearly biting into her tongue by accident. _Ohhhhh_ , that would've hurt. "As long as it's a joke!"

_It's why we're good friends, Cayleb, it's why I asked_ her _about guys_.

"But that's for herself, though. When it comes to _youuuuuu_." She points a finger at him, cocking her head and allowing one corner of her lips to curl up higher than the other, a too-casual crooked smile. She wonders if he can see through it, _nothing_ about Jester Lavorre is casual. "When it comes to you, she's not afraid. And you're not afraid either, for her." 

A momentary twinge of jealousy seems to well under her throat, and she hesitantly walks forward, guided by a feeling that she's not quite sure what to name. (Or not quite _willing_ to? She's not certain.)

"Everyone asked me what _I_ wanted in the hot tub," she breathes, remembering that night with the beautiful _hamsters_ and _He is lucky to have you_ and the warmth of his chest against hers as she pulled him into that hug. "What… about… you, Cayleb?"

“What do _I_ want?” Caleb repeats. He repeated her often, just to give himself more time to respond, to see the curiosity in her eyes linger just a little longer.

What he’s wanted has changed so much in so little time. From wanting to turn back the clock, save what has been lost… and suddenly he’s hanging on to everything he has now, because he would give anything to keep this. His friends, his experiences, his _happiness_ …

And yet he felt so selfish for standing beside Jester, because after everything he wants _her_. She was the one who dropped pebbles of happiness, little seeds of chaos.

Caleb gulps. “I want to keep fighting for what we have here,” he says, vagueness on his side. “But…” he looks at the oven. “I also would not mind some cupcakes.”

Jester giggles, her stomach seeming to do nervous little flips. She has no idea why her peal of laughter is so _uncertain_ , but it is and she's biting into her lower lip harshly, the sting of it keeping her _here_ and present where she kind of wishes she could float away.

She's not stupid, no matter what people might think—she knows Caleb's lost the people most _dearest_ to him. She knows Beau doesn't trust the magic Caleb's playing with sometimes. Knows it has to do with _time_ , with old mistakes, with _fire_.

She's a detective, after all.

Jester knows she used to messily step all over his buttons, carelessly poke him about his smell and his dirty clothing and his grown-out beard and the fact that he couldn't afford anything. Parts of his crushing poverty, which all started because he escaped from a very bad place. A _san-at-or-ium_ , Jester thinks carefully in her head, remembering one of the staff members in the Lavish Chateau who would tell her horror stories. _Bad children are sent away_ , the junior chef would say to Jester, who in turn blew a raspberry at him. Her hands were sticky with chocolate, and he shook his head at her. _Bad children are forgotten, little Sapphire_.

"Cupcakes," she's muttering to herself, a hand threading through her hair. It's only in the last second that she notices something—the fire glowing hotter than it should, the cupcakes blackening and smoke starting to blot around it. "Shit," she says, reaching for oven mitts. " _Shit_ , fucking _balls_ —"

“ _Schiesse,_ careful—“ Caleb exclaims, running towards the oven, nearly tripping over Jester. 

Caleb opens the oven, rubbing his hands together vigorously, muttering an incantation in order to activate a spell.

Smoke _pours_ out of the oven, black and sooty just like Caleb’s fingers. Quickly, Caleb starts moving his hands methodically to dissipate the smoke, and extinguish any small fires that seemed to have sparked.

Caleb coughs a moment, almost sure his face is now ashy. “Good thing—“ he coughs, “Fire is my _specialty_ —“

" _OH NO_ ," Jester nearly wails, and she smacks her foot against the ground in teary frustration, glaring accusatorially at the oven. It's a rusty old thing, they hadn't replaced it when they first moved into the house, and Caduceus never complained about it… but Caduceus was a _very_ good cook.

Not like Jester. Jester, whose cupcakes were now _ruined_ and she used so many ingredients and Caleb got a recipe just for her! Just because she mentioned she wanted to learn now and—

" _HOW IS THIS BALANCE?_ " she shouts to the cosmos, grabbing her pendant. "Maybe this is just," and her lower lip is trembling, she's acting like such a _baby_ and her lower lip is trembling, "the Traveler's way of saying not to make things my way." She gazes at him miserably. "I'm sorry, Cayleb, I ruined your gift to me!"

Caleb closes the oven, wiping his now sweating face with his sleeve, smearing soot all over it. 

“Oh Jester,” he says through small laughs. He walks up to her, placing his hands against her shoulders assuringly. “That was the oven’s fault. You didn’t ruin a thing.”

He looks ridiculous. Hair blown back, ashy face. Almost as if it were the day they met all over again.

“Besides,” he gestures to the bowl full of blueberry goodness. “We still have an entire bowl of frosting, ja? We cannot let that go to waste.”

Jester stares at him, drinking in with her eyes the surreal sight of him. There's soot all over his pale face, a sharp contrast, and it's in his _hair_ too—his fiery, perfect hair, mussed and dirty and like he climbed down the chimney the way Saint Nicholas might. She imagines Caleb in a ridiculous Winter's Crest red suit with a hat, and her lips quirk up, a smile helpless against the imagery. "Oh my gosh," she's laughing, reaching over to draw a dick on his cheek, erasing the soot with her blue finger. " _I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus_ ," she sings, her voice lilting over the words. If her mother sang the tune it would be more operatic.

"You were _really cool_ just now," Jester informs him, drawing a vagina on his other cheek with her other hand. Her first is still resting on his face, and it's like she's addicted to the warmth of his skin. She can't find it in herself to let go of him. "So I will feed you some frosting.”

Caleb can _feel_ the familiar patterns being drawn on his face. Perhaps the only predictable part about Jester was her doodling habits.

“Lucky me,” he murmurs, like he’s drunk with pleasure. He was _useless_ against her, and he knew it, so completely willing to listen to anything she had to say, so desperate to accept anything she had to offer.

He pulls her hands from his face, giving them a gentle squeeze before letting go. “Let me wash my face first,” he says, sniffling at the way the ash tickles his skin.

He moves quickly, turning the water on to splash against his skin, watching the blackened water go down the drain before patting himself dry with a towel, watching Jester in anticipation.

Jester smears the icing on her fingers, licking the sugary sweetness. For a moment, in a useless flight of fancy, she imagines feeding it to Caleb with her fingers, imagines the flush on his cheeks and his lips parting around her blue thumb. The… _crazy_ thing, the thing that makes her feel light-headed… is that she thinks he might even go through with it, if she put it on the table. If she teased him to, using the amusement she welled up in him as cover for them both to touch each other that way. She… _could_.

She could do this. She could touch his clavicle and claim it was simply her poking him and teasing about how he should _work out with meeeee, Cayleb, you'll have abs in no time!!!_ She could put her hands on his sides once more and bury him in an over-enthusiastic hug. She has an entire language of excuses for him, she thinks, perhaps they could hold hands while she's bright-eyed and telling him about the Traveler.

Jester reaches for a spoon as he submerges his face in his hands, the soot washing away like a snake shedding its own skin. Her smile is coy when he looks up and she holds the spoon out to him, the blue pretty and sugary and so, so innocent.

Caleb raises an eyebrow at Jester, reading and analyzing her body, the way she was leaning, her eyes telling him she was determined to get something from him, and it might not just be the spoonful of sugar she had laid out for him.

Caleb dips his head down, taking the spoon in his mouth gently. He hums slightly, impressed with Jester’s guessing game with the sugar. It wasn’t as strong as the batter and it had just the right amount of blueberry.

Caleb wipes his lip with his thumb, licking off the last bit of frosting. “Wow,” he says, licking his lips. “That is actually pretty good. Shame we don’t have any cupcakes for it.”

Caleb’s eyes move to Jester’s lips, puckered and blue, almost the same blue as the frosting. No doubt she’s already dipped her fingers in the frosting, tasting her own creation, and he wonders if the sweetness still lingers on her lips…

Caleb flushes, moving his eyes back to the now clean spoon instead. _Selfish, selfish,_ he repeats to himself. “Ah… the trouble was— was worth that spoonful,” he mutters, feeling Jester’s eyes on him, as if she _knew_ the way her gaze made him burn.

Jester's head hurts—she's smarter than everyone thinks she is, but sometimes she's just so _tired_ of thinking. And she _likes_ thinking about Caleb, she likes thinking about the way their hands flit around each other and the darkness in his eyes and the reddish-brown of his chest hair. She likes how he asks her questions, she likes how he thinks about her, she likes that she has a presence in her head.

But sometimes _she's so tired of thinking_ , and she's stepping forward, as he says _spoonful_ , Caleb twitching and flushing in front of her. Her hand reaches for the crevice between his jaw and neck, and her eyes run greedily over the sharp angles of his cheekbones, over his wet hair, before she pulls forward on her very tippy-toes. And into a kiss, this gentle brush of her lips against his.

_Oh,_ he was right. She tasted sweet, better than the frosting all together.

Caleb inhales sharply, something gnawing at his throat, eyes wide open as Jester pushes her lips to his, soft and inviting, teasing him just enough. Teasing him as if she wanted him to have a reaction, giving him a chance to have a second taste.

She looks absolutely radiant. _Happy._ Happy to have kissed _him_. Greed is clawing in Caleb’s stomach, like an unsatisfied meal, and his doubts vanish slowly as he pulls Jester by the waist to kiss her again.

This time, his eyes are closed. His lips slip between hers, and he can feel her eyelashes flutter against his cheek.

The frosting seems so long ago now. _This_ was worth the trouble. The blushing, the teasing, _this_ was worth it.

Jester sighs against his lips, mouth opening as she feels his tongue. He's breathing deeply, inhaling the scent of her, and Jester's hand reaches up, fumbling for _anything_ and then resting at the nape of his neck, where she can feel small strands of hair between her fingers. As Caleb leans into her, deepening their kiss, Jester makes a sound—she hopes it sounds more like a sultry _moan_ than the squeak she hears in her ears—and her fingers thread higher, as if led by instinct. She's never really _made out_ with someone before, but resting her hand—unapologetically, without excuse or reason—in his loose strands and tightening her grip there… it feels natural.

So does Caleb's hand gripping her waist and so does the way they're fumbling back, Jester's hips against the counter as she whispers his name against his mouth. "Cayyyyleb," she's grinning, and her lips feel flushed. She wonders if Caleb enjoyed the taste of her sugar dusting them. "Are you, like"—another kiss between their words, Caleb's eyes closed as he presses his forehead against hers—"secretly in love with me, or something?" The tease becomes uncharacteristically _real_ at the last word, and she kisses him once more, lips pressed against his to try to chase away that naked, bare vulnerability.

Caleb’s hands slip lower, lifting Jester with his limited strength onto the counter. He’s sighing, and she keeps coaxing groans from his mouth like she’s practiced it a hundred times.

“Not really a”—he kisses her again, teeth nipping at her lower lip gently as he pulls away—“secret anymore, is it?”

He pauses for a moment, Jester’s lips swollen, tilting his head at her small heaves and sighs. He takes in her blush, hardly believing that she blushed that way because of _him_.

Caleb takes his thumb, gently scraping a bit of frosting onto it from the bowl before brushing it across Jester’s lips, just as if he too could paint like Jester.

Caleb’s hands reach for Jester’s hair, pulling gently at her curls as he kisses the frosting from Jester’s lips.

Was it selfish he was glad they didn’t have cupcakes to use this frosting on anymore? Yes, it was. But he’s getting addicted to the sounds Jester is making, and the way her hips are rocking, and that is… _way_ better than cupcakes.

Jester gasps, the messy slide of the sweetness between their mouths the perfect accompaniment to the fucking _heat_ of Caleb's lips, Caleb's mouth. She's not sure how he knew the fantasy playing out in her mind, if her wiggling eyebrow as she offered him the spoonful of icing was so _obvious_ … or, and her cheeks colour deeper as she imagines this… perhaps he wasn't reading her mind.

Perhaps he wanted this too, just as bad. Perhaps he was just as insatiable as her, perhaps he wanted to _consume_ —and _oh_ , his tongue is running over a fang, and she's whimpering out his name, her other hand not curled possessively in his hair gripping his shoulder. Jester's legs are parted, her dress fluffing up all around her, and Caleb's frame in between them intrudes on her layers in the most perfect way.

"Well, maybe"—she groans as she feels him against her, pulling him close by her legs and digging a hand into his shoulder—"I love you _tewwwww_ , how about that?" Her heart is thudding so loud she swears she can hear it.

Caleb leans against her face, his mouth reaching to nip at her ear, the jewelry tinkling so nicely against Jester’s heavy sighs.

“I would like that,” he whispers, pressing a gentle kiss along her jaw. “I would like that very much, Jester.” His voice was so low, accent thicker than he normally let it be. Caleb’s hands lower to Jester’s hips, thumbs brushing her sides as he kisses her again.

_Fuck._ He loves her. She loves _him_. And he never wants to let go of her, never wants to take his mouth from her lips again, because he knows he’ll never find anything sweeter.

“I love you,” he breathes. “ _Ich liebe dich…_ ”

Jester's arms wrap around him, and she wiggles a little under her touch. Just the slightest shimmy of her thighs, shoulders… her chest is buzzing with this happiness she doesn't quite know what to do with and she exhales, her breathing uneven. "You do, don't you?" Her voice is very, very small for a moment, and she watches his eyes for a moment, watches how they shine.

Her fingers reach for his clavicle and after simply a moment's hesitation, she begins to trace his jaw, and then lower, down his jaw. His breathing trembles under her sure touch, and Jester smiles, taking in the sight of him. He's so close and fits in so perfectly here, in this kitchen, between her legs, in her arms, and Jester thinks for a moment about _Tusk Love_ , about _Oscar_ and his tall frame and broad shoulders.

About all the things she's supposed to want. The love stories she'd read about, the giggling fancies of some of her mother's attendants. The way she would sit by her window to the ocean and watch the waves lap against the beach, the sun setting in and seeming far out of reach. 

She wonders if it's time she threw that recipe out, too.

Right now, as the birds sing through the window and Caleb presses a kiss to her temple, she closes her eyes and lets herself breathe.


End file.
